Centennial Expressions on Peter Kropotkin 1842-1942.

so clearly how much communistic institutions
and property prevail amid the present capitalistic order of society as well as in every
other society that has ever been known. If
only he had asserted how universal and necessary is private use of property in every society,
he would have provided a highly useful and
scientific definition of property. To some extent Proudhon before him had done that.
None of these socialists, whether Marxian
or anarchist, have sufficient appreciation of the
fact that the real evil is not property but its
maldistribution, and especially monopoly control of property such as "the money power"
and large land holdings. Undiscriminatingly
they hate the petty bourgeois as much as the
bloated capitalist and great landlord.
However Kropotkin, evidently again to
prove the workability of communes, tried to
show the advantages in agricultural production of intensive cultivation as compared with
the uneconomic extensive cultivation of the
"bonanza" farms and cattle ranches. These
valuable studies are contained in his books entitled "Fields, Factories and Workshops" and
"The Conquest of Bread." One feels, however, in reading them that Kropotkin got lost
in the fog of his own doctrine of solidarity.
Inasmuch as these intensively cultivated fields
would in his assumed best organization of
them involve the cooperation of quite a nunmber of workers in one enterprise, we think he
failed to realize how lamentably incompetent
are communistic undertakings. Where a number of persons work together it is indispensable
that the manager's authority and direction be
not subject to dispute. That means necessarily limitation upon individulal initiative and
restraint of individual freedom of the subordinate workers. That is why anarchistic
communism is not practicable in large scale
production.
On the other hand, Kropotkin's analysis of
agricultural improvement has great value as a
criticism of traditional economics. His shift
of emphasis from production to consumption,
from labor done to need for produce or goods,
is definitely in the direction of humanizing
economics. Combining his several definitiolns
of economics, political economy is conceived
by him as in process of becoming "a science devoted to the study of the needs of men and of
the means of satisfying them," or as "the studsy
of the most favorable condition for giving
society the greatest amount of useful products," "with the smallest possible waste of
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labor" or "with the least waste of human
energy" "and with the greatest benefit to mankind in general." He regards the self-sustaining community as more economical than our
present exchange economy based on roundabout production. His argument for mutual aid goes no further than saying that this
is one of the two factors of progress or evolution, the other factor being the competitive
struggle for existence. Highly as he regarded
Adam Smith, he deemed division of labor as
a "horrible principle," "noxious to society,"
"brutalizing to the individual," and "source of
so much harm."
It "means labelling and
stamping men for life." It destroys "the love
of work and the capacity of invention."
He maintained long before the first World
War that decentralization of industries is
rapidly taking place. The industrialized nations are losing their monopoly of manufactures. The backward agricultural countries
are supplementing their economies with industrial development. Intensive agriculture
and other improvements are taking place. Side
by "side of the great centralized concerns" is
"the growth of an infinite variety of small
enterprises." Electrical power has stimulated
this development. Since his time the automobile and now airways and aircraft development further this trend. Decentralization is
therefore the tendency of the economic order.
Likewise he foresaw political decentralization. Representative democracy had its value
against autocracy, but it is not the ideal. The
best social life lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial, professional and
functional. Are we not now forecasting with
him that imperialism is at an end